DLC is undeniably the digital documentation of the spawn of the devil, but every time EA comes out with a new world for The Sims 3, I buy it and I download it old school legit styles for the purposes of review, because I know how important it is that we the people know whether or not we should spend our hard earned money on new Sims 3 worlds.

In which I speculate on the content of Hidden Springs and mention the price…

Hidden Springs, a world that allegedly contains the fountain of youth and will allow your sims to remain young forever, is either 2,450 sim points, or 2,250 sim points, depending on whether or not you get it on ‘special’. In real money that works out to 22.50 or 24.50 roughly.

The world comes with over twenty exclusive items, including things that you’ve always desired, like a slightly different letterbox design and a fairly non-descript fountain (probably the fountain of youth, now I think about it.)

There are also alleged new locations, though we’ll see how many of those are actually new locations and not just new rabbit holes to stare at gormlessly whilst your sim disappears inside for a good long while. There’s nothing more demoralizing than realizing you’re spending the precious minutes of your life playing a game in which you are forced to imagine what your character is doing, because the developer decided it would be better to show you a progress bar with a coffee cup above it than bother to create the cafe your sim is in.

In which I first set eyes on Hidden Springs…

One word came to mind when I first laid eyes on Hidden Springs: sparse. Okay, maybe two words. Sparse and spacious. The designers have done a wonderful job of creating the feel of a mountain / lake front town. Sims are going to have to travel great distances to get from one side of Hidden Springs to the other. The dirt roads that connect many of the locations on the outskirts of Hidden Springs are a very nice touch too.

There really are a bunch of new places to visit too, with several cafes and eateries your sim can physically go into and mingle with friends whilst you control their every move and their every thought like a benevolent diety that likes cake quite a lot. There’s even the odd discotheque scattered about the place so your Sim can go socialize after dark and earn a few celebrity points if you have the Late Night expansion pack.

In which I tell you how where to find the fountain of youth!

The illustrious fountain of youth itself can be found with the sculptures in the décor section of buy mode and costs a mere 495,000 simoleons. It’s not all that large, in fact, when placed it seems rather innocuous. But it does have an option when clicked on that allows your sim to wish for youth. Wishes are not guaranteed to be granted, but the fountain does demand a 25 simoleon donation for every wish. It turns out that the fountain of youth is quite the crafty and business minded fountain. One minor disappointment is the fact that even when the fountain does grant the gift of youth, or says it does, there’s no obvious change in the sim’s appearance or in their life stage.

In which I tell you to get this world at your earliest convenience…

So is Hidden Springs worth the money and the bandwidth? I would say unequivocally, yes. It’s a much better world than Barnacle Bay, with more to recommend it to players looking for a varied sims experience. It’s also got a great deal of atmosphere and ambiance, you can practically taste the pine sap at the back of your throat. The fact that it also features an item with a unique function (the fountain of youth) seals the deal for me.